2mo ago

Using my Steam deck as a mini PC ?

I've been considering getting a mini PC for my living room, basically only to watch online videos without ads or watch locally stored videos.

Since I have a Steam deck available that I already often dock to my screen for gaming, could I use it instead of buying a new computer?

My main concern is the impact this would have on the battery if it's plugged in for long periods of time, does it bypass the battery when it's plugged in and the battery is full ? Will other components be impacted?

46 comments

The Deck can bypass the battery when plugged in. And in fact, does so by default if the battery gets above 90%; it would stop charging the battery and just draw power directly from the USB cable.
With the Decky Loader plugin Powertools you can customize this threshold. I use my Deck as my only PC for work, and have the threshold set to 70%.
For video watching, I can't imagine having any issues! If you have the OLED model (I think), you can even get Wake on WLAN to work if you plan to store it out of view (although that does feel a bit unfortunate for the poor guy, it has such a nice screen...)
- So it does charge above 90% when docked, but does not actually use the battery above that? Because I definitely see the battery charging when I have my SteamDeck OLED docked, would be nice to change that though, I guess I need to look into those plugins.
  
  IIRC the stock behavior is to switch to AC at every charge level, but after 90% charging very slowly to 100 and then doing until it falls below 90 again which it would take a long time to do while still powered.
  I worded that initial description pretty poorly, given the default behavior is that it always uses AC power if it's connected to AC.
  Thankfully, with that Powertools plugin you will get to see exactly what the Deck is doing in terms of power and disable even that slow charge above 90% (which I have done), or even force the battery to charge at full rates above 90, should you need to prepare for a trip or something... Give it a try.

I did this exact thing when contemplating getting a mini pc. I got an external drive and turned my Deck into a Kodi box. It's been great, though it had trouble pushing 4K60, so I have it set up to output 1080. If you're setting up something like Kodi it's worth mentioning that the Deck uses KDE, so you can set window rules to always open the application fullscreen.

I would say it's great but would strongly recommend using Bazzite over steam OS even on the deck.
My biggest gripe with the steam deck is that it's not well equipped to handle user packages in the same way OSTree is. Bazzite solves this while still mostly adhering to the design principles of steam os, so I feel it's actually better than the stock operating system.
- it's not well equipped to handle user packages in the same way OSTree is
  Can you elaborate?
  
  Sure.
  Valve's operating system is read only and, when steam decides to update, any root level file changes will be lost between updates. This is partly good because the system will always be recoverable and update reliably, but comes with the downside that users have to take extra steps to install some base level packages (things like tailscale, syncthing etc. There's always work arounds, but it's not a guarantee that these work arounds will continue to work on new updates.)
  OSTree is also a read only file system utility that allows packages to be layered, so users can install their own packages. When the operating system updates, these packages are rebased and preserved on the next update so user level changes can be preserved.
  There's more to this than that, but basically steam os is dependent on valve updating packages and generally leave all extensions either hand off or need to work around root filesystem. Ostree/silverblue/bazzite allow user modification by having a slightly more sophisticated updating process.

You can use it for absolutely anything. That's the beauty of Linux. Will it be good for it, as is? No, not really.
A lot of streaming services will limit you to 720p unless you use their first-party apps, which they don't make for Linux.
Also the interface is not ideal for that sort of thing.
Leaving it plugged in permanently is not really good for the battery, but not a huge deal either. There's probably some way to enable a "kiosk mode" to keep the battery @ 50%, which would be ideal.
- leaving it plugged in is perfectly fine, once the battery fills up, it is bypassed and the deck is powered directly off of the wire
  
  That's how all chargers work. The problem is that it's simply not great to have your battery at 100% all of the time.

I’ve been using mine as a Mini PC for almost a year since getting it. It works great. The only issues with it I’ve personally had come with regular issues with Linux itself. The battery is still in great health. I’ve only recently had any sort of problem with it and even then I believe it’s just a reasonable hardware failure more than something caused by using it this way.
- Over two years with mine, battery aging isn't noticeable. I'm pretty sure when plugged in and fully charged, the Deck runs off of external power. I don't know if it shunts around the battery or not, but it certainly isn't cycling the battery.
  I mostly use my deck in a few fixed locations, so it's mostly plugged in.
  
  re the shunt: yes it does

You can use it like that, yeah, it's basically like a "laptop" in that sense, just a fair bit smaller.
Normally I'd recommend getting devices for a specific purpose, like a mini tower custom build for a mini PC with powerful yet efficient and affordable specs - or maybe an older used tower. Though, if cost to performance ratio isn't as important to you as portability and ease of setup, then a Steam Deck would likely be a good choice.
- I'm trying to do as much as possible with what I already have as long as it is convenient enough. So I'll try with my Steam deck first !

As I mention always whenever this topic comes up, it might be my specific setup but don’t leave it off and plugged into a dock for long periods of time: it seems to discharge the battery and not realizing it’s happened. In my experience as long as you unplug it after shutting it off, there’s no downside.
- That's a good point. I lose about 5% a from the charge limit after a whole day of the Deck being plugged in and mostly on. I suppose doing a weekly power cycle could also work.
  There's also the BIOS setting that turns the Deck on when connected to AC, just in case it does run out of battery and won't turn on after a power outage.
  
  What I’m describing is really nasty, as you think the battery is let’s say at 95% and you unplug it to be used as ha handheld. It’s updating a few games and you turn around, do something else… then check back on the updates and the Deck is off because it ran out of battery in a couple of minutes. I don’t think it’s good for the battery to be drained that much

You'll have no issues whatsoever.
The Deck has been my daily driver for a while now. I had an old laptop that bit the dust about a week before my LCD Deck arrived during launch a couple of years ago. I never bothered to replace it, instead I picked up a reasonably priced display and just moved over to the Deck. About 90% of my use has been docked as my main PC, and I absolutely love that it comes with me with built in display and controller when I'm traveling the other 10% of the time.
- Me too

I used my SteamDeck as a media center for a while, and it worked pretty well. I never had any battery issues. It did have a little bit of trouble on super high-quality videos, but it worked well enough for the rest

Yeah, just to add another voice to the choir, I've been using my steam deck primarily docked in desktop mode since launch. Works great, no issues, battery is still great when I need it.

I use my steam deck docked primarily to stream from my main PC to my living room. I haven't noticed any battery degradation when I do use it in handheld. I got it March 2022.
Also if you happen to be using Emby as a media server, the emby theater app image supports controller :)

After my PCs motherboad gave up two years ago, I never bought a new one. I tested how long I'm happy with just the Steam Deck.
Well to be honest I bought a Raspberry PI 400, but that's for personal and bank stuff. This way the kernel level bullshit that various companies want to install with your games doesn't really matter.
Otherwise it's 100% Steam Deck.

I’ve been doing this for half a year.
Yes, it’s literally a functional PC,
But don’t expect too much, it’s just a decently basic one, and. It doesn’t work well for heavy tasks like running cyberpunk 2077 or graphics rendering

Thank you all for your detailed responses, I'll definitely give it a try! It would be great if it turns out to be convenient enough.

I've been wanting to get a deck motherboard to do just this with, but they're hard to find these days

Wait a few days for CES and see what other vendors will ship with SteamOS. Asus and Lenovo usually allow to limit battery charging. Steam Deck doesn't.

If you want to preserve your battery, follow the same principles for any battery, avoid having above 80% and below 20%. I'm not sure for KDE, but on GNOME I have a GUI utility that lets you set this and enable/disable with a toggle.
- on GNOME I have a GUI utility that lets you set this and enable/disable with a toggle.
  The charging controller must support that feature. Notebooks by Asus, Lenovo and maybe others do, perhaps even the Ally and Legion handhelds, but if the battery controller doesn't support that, the toggle will do nothing.

Battery should be fine based on my experience.
If you have an OLED you can have the deck wake up when a BLE connects, but there's also a bios setting to wake up LCD/OLED Decks when plugged in. I've heard of people getting smart plugs (or even remote toggled plugs) and plugging their dock charger into that. When you want to wake up the deck just toggle the power off and on, and the deck will wake up.

holy crap. I was going to do this but was lazy but now I totally want to try something. thanks for posting.

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